


Saline Emergence

by merriman



Category: Dixit (Card Game)
Genre: Gen, Oceans, Rabbits, Rivers, Salt, Stream of Consciousness, Surrealism, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 17:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13128798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: The rabbits lead you where you need to be, which is sometimes not where you need to be but will be. The rabbits are pretty smart, after all.





	Saline Emergence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oxymora (oxymoron)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoron/gifts).



> This is probably one of the stranger things I've ever written, but it was also a load of fun.

The rabbits were frightened. That was the first thing to notice. They were frozen in place, staring forward, ears back, ready to run. The field was empty, the sky stretching on and on and on in blankness. Somehow it was neither night nor day, dawn or twilight. The same dim light seemed to evenly glow everywhere and nowhere. It was a nothing place. Empty but for the rabbits. Finally, after what seemed like endless time and an instant, one of the rabbits took off like a shot, out into the empty world. We gave chase, the other rabbits running with us at our sides.

The sound of rushing water came to us softly, like words that told us who we were. We were rivulets and drops and falls and trickles and rapids and tributaries and the rabbits were rocks. Frightened running rocks we wended our way around. They were rocks and they were hands, pointing and guiding us into rivers.

"Where do we go?" we asked the rabbits, but they were silent because rabbits don't talk. Rocks also don't talk, but hands talk and they did. They made the signs for salt and cupped us gently so we ran in lines that told the stories of the lives of rivers before us.

The rabbits had boats. I didn't mention that because they didn't have them until they had them and then they were there. The rabbits waved to us with their ears and were no longer scared. They beckoned to us to follow, but we were the rivers in the hands so we didn't follow so much as led. 

I think I was the lifeline. I think I was the river that died. I think I was the source of the river and maybe the current and the bed and the estuary that went to the sea. I think so. I don't know so. But I think.

The rabbits weren't the rivers. That much I know.

We cascaded in the end. Everything cascades out of hand and into the sea. You can't hold an ocean, after all. You can't just be the world. Unless you can be. I don't know that either. 

The rabbits in their boat went over the palm and into the rain that fell through empty space. They still weren't scared and I know that because they sang as they fell. Rabbits don't talk, obviously, but they sang because rabbits are true lovers of music. We all know that. The rabbits sang sea chantys because they were pirates but I'm only saying that because someone told me so. I didn't see any patches over their eyes or hooks on their paws. 

They sang about lowlands and we were there, in the lowlands, we weren't cascading anymore we were an island of low land in the ocean which was just a drop. A drip. I was a drip. We were all drips. We were all drops. We were all worlds because I guess you can be the world if you want to. You can be a whole world inside a raindrop, falling and falling and falling because it rains in the lowlands. It rains in the highlands too but we weren't there. You could be there if you wanted to. The rabbits weren't there. They were in another drop. They were all in drops. Each rabbit took some of the ocean and made it a home. We made homes too, building worlds in our drops. We built lands and villages and people to live in them and we were there too. 

I can only speak about my village, as an aside, because I didn't visit the others. I didn't visit the others because of surface tension, which is like a border but liminal. I only say that because when it breaks it becomes something else. But back to my village.

It was all white buildings with red rooftops because I pricked my finger and my blood because roofing shingles because why wouldn't it? And the people who lived in the world in my drop were made of salt.

Everyone who lives in tears is made of salt. We dissolve so fast.

Under the surface of my drop, which was everywhere, there were roots. The roots of the trees in my land fed on salt, and they were hungry, but we fed them roofing shingles until they subsided. In my village we had people and dogs and cats and trees and houses and roofing shingles. Just like everywhere else. But I only assume that because I was in my village and nowhere else. Everyone else assumes the same. That's how it goes when you live in a raindrop from a river that used to be you.

The rabbits built ladders in their raindrops. I don't know how.

There were no rabbits in my village until they climbed out of their drop and into mine and then our drops were the same and then another drop joined us and we had two villages and a snake and a glowing light that someone else made instead of a village. That just goes to show you that we all make what we will of what we have.

The rabbits twitched their noses and their ears made the signs for carrots but we didn't have any, so we fed them salt and they thanked us. With their ears, of course. Then they warned us that we would be landing soon and to brace for impact. Rabbit ear sign language is wonderfully nuanced, you know. Rabbits are true masters of communication.

We fell and fell and then we landed and we didn't know what we had been so worried about because it wasn't a crash landing, it was a welcoming. It was a homecoming. It was a party for us in the ocean where we were all supposed to be in the first place. Our lands and villages and lights and snakes, we were all in the ocean with the sky open above us to show us where we had come from. And the rabbits weren't scared, they were racing away over the ocean, leaping the waves like dolphins, except I know they were rabbits because dolphins don't have long ears or little white furry tails.

The rabbits said goodbye and good luck with their ears and we waved with our hands full of salt but they didn't see because they were gone by then and we were on our own except for the huge arm that rose up out of the sea and I knew that arm. It was mine. My arm. 

No it wasn't. It just looked like mine. That's ridiculous.

But we were the water so we rushed around the arm even if it was someone else's and it had a torch so we thought it must be important. 

It was important. It led us home.

It was her arm. The land's arm. Which meant it was my arm after all. It was all our arms. We're all just floating, you know. We're in the sea because we belong here, but we're also on the land because we belong there too. And the rabbits have their ship again and sometimes they visit at dawn when the world begins anew.

**Author's Note:**

> Cards used for inspiration, in order:  
> Bottom left corner: [1](https://kapitiboardgamers.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/dixit4.jpg)  
> Third from the right, fourth down: [2](https://spelhuis.be/Files/7/112000/112353/Attachments/Product/9w8Z3355z8971849979fn95y98V85856.jpg)  
> [3](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51qGFiQX0gL.jpg)  
> Top row second from the left: [4](http://www.thirstymeeples.co.uk/images/uploads/DixitINa.jpg)  
> Furthest to the left: [5](https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/geekmom/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Cards.png)  
> [6](https://www.pinterest.de/pin/369576713144778031)
> 
> I didn't have a chance to get good images and host them somewhere anonymous but I'll try to put them up somewhere after reveals.


End file.
